Inclusive Digital Society
WE WANT EVERYONE INCLUDED
IN THE DIGITAL WORLD.
In today’s world, access to information and communications networks is nearly as important as access to clean water and transportation. With two and one-half billion people still unable to connect to mobile telephony or broadband, we believe it is our responsibility to help close this digital divide.
Over the course of 2008, we transformed our commitment to digital inclusion into action primarily through our Digital Bridge Initiative. Within this context, we accelerated our partnership initiatives in Haiti, Mali and Madagascar, supporting these projects by providing installation services and expertise in addition to equipment and applications. In addition, we continued work at the partnership centers in our office in Cairo. >>>
These serve as entrepreneurial incubation centers. Our goal is to support and guide local information and communications technology (ICT) start-up companies, to help them become commercially viable and potentially, local Alcatel-Lucent partners.
Helping Coffee Growers Compete More Effectively
We have been working in partnership with coffee company Cafés Malongo, the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis and Haitian mobile telephone operator Comcel/Voilà to help Haitian coffee growers compete more effectively on world markets. >>>
More specifically, the project involves providing growers in the remote Cap Rouge part of Haiti with broadband internet access and enhancing the traceability of their ‘fair trade’ coffee. Our contribution of the necessary telecommunications equipment – a WiMAX base station and the associated terminals – as well as services and support was key to the launch of broadband Internet access for 1,200 small Cap Rouge coffee growers in March 2008. Thanks to broadband internet access, the growers’ cooperatives are now more closely monitoring markets for the ‘fair trade’ coffee they produce. They have also begun using so-called RFID wireless tags to identify and track their product as it moves to market. Three schools, serving more than 1,000 children, and a health center also enjoy access to broadband connections, part of the broad effort to help Haitian farmers benefit from remote learning to improve production techniques.
Improving Emergency Room Care
A new communications system designed to improve emergency services at Gabriel Touré hospital in Bamako, Mali went into operation in March 2008 as part of our partnership with the Mali Health Ministry and the Thiam Foundation. >>>
The foundation is dedicated to improving emergency care in Mali, whose population suffers from extremely high infant mortality rates and extraordinarily low life expectancy rates. The complete, integrated business communications solution donated by Alcatel-Lucent constitutes a key element in a broad effort to accelerate emergency room patient diagnosis at the hospital. The solution, based on the Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Office platform, combines an IP voice server, electronic messaging server, internal communications controller and an emergency contact center. Our people worked closely with the hospital staff to implement the new communication system, to ensure that new processes were developed to take full advantage of its capabilities, supporting better medical care for all patients, including those from some of the city’s poorest areas.
Building Digital Infrastructure
Twenty young Madagascans proudly accepted their diplomas at the end of 2008, constituting the first graduating class of a two-year e-education and e-trade training program. The ceremony in the capital city of Antananarivo marked a high-point in our cooperative effort with ATD Fourth World, a non-profit dedicated to fighting world poverty, and local Internet service provider Data Telecom Service. October 2008 also saw the first anniversary of the launch of free broadband Internet access at five sites in the capital city. >>>
The free access sites were made possible by our donations of equipment and installation services. They mean that residents of the city now benefit not only from educational applications but also enjoy access to commercial applications for selling the production of their cooperative, such as groundnut oil, wooden furniture, embroidery and woven fabrics.
Cooperating Internationally
We continued building on more than a decade of partnership with the development sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 2008. The ITU development sector helps developing countries extend the benefit of access to infrastructure and information and communication services to the majority of their people. In particular, we contributed to the work of the Telecommunication Development Advisory Group, to efforts to establish guidelines for introducing next generation networks in developing countries and to several panels and workshops. We also took part in preparations for the ITU’s World Telecommunication Policy Forum in April 2009. An active contributor to the two World Summits on Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva in 2003 and Tunis in 2005, we continued to participate in a variety of WSIS follow- up initiatives in 2008 aimed at spreading broadband access and bridging the digital divide. These follow up efforts were carried out in coordination with the International Chamber of Commerce.
